The Emperor of Elba[14]

Napoleon and the Popular Frenzy — Serious Dangers Incurred — The Exile under the British Flag — The Voyage to Elba — The Napoleonic Court at Porto Ferrajo — Mysterious Visitors — Estrangement of Maria Louisa — Napoleon's "Isle of Repose" — The Congress of Vienna — Its Violation of Treaty Agreement — Discontent in France — Revival of Imperialism — Bitterness of the Army — Intrigues against the Bourbons — Napoleon's Behavior — His Fears of Assassination.

1814-15

Napoleon's journey to Elba was a series of disenchantments. As has been said, he had stipulated in his "treaty" that the Empress should accompany him to St. Tropez, where he was to embark. Her absence, he persisted in declaring, was explicable only by forced detention; and he again talked of withdrawing his abdication at this breach of the engagements made by the allies. But he grew more composed, and the journey was sufficiently comfortable as far as Lyons. Occasionally during that portion of it there were outbursts of good feeling from those who stopped to see his train pass by. But in descending the Rhone there was a marked change. As the Provençals had been the radicals of the Revolution, so now they were the devotees of the Restoration. The flood of disreputable calumny had broken loose: men said the Emperor's mother was a loose woman, his father a butcher, he himself but a bastard, his true name Nicholas. "Down with Bonaparte! down with Nicholas!" was too often the derisive shout as he traversed the villages. Maubreuil, the hired assassin, was hurrying from Paris with a desperate band, ostensibly to recover crown jewels or government funds which might be among Napoleon's effects. Recalling Alexander's boast that his best servants had been found among the assassins of his father, and recollecting that Francis sighed to Metternich for Napoleon's exile to a far-distant land, Elba being too near to France and to Europe, it is conceivable that Talleyrand might reckon on the moral support of the dynasties in conniving at Napoleon's assassination. Had he forgotten the murder of Enghien? Probably not; but his conscience was not over-tender. Near Valence, on April twenty-fourth, the imperial procession met Augereau's carriage. The arch-republican of Napoleon's earlier career had given his adhesion to the new government, and had been retained in office. He alighted, the ex-Emperor likewise: the latter exhibited all the ordinary forms of politeness, the former studiously disdained them. Napoleon, with nice irony, asked if the general were on his way to court. The thrust went home, but in a gruff retort Augereau, using the insulting "thou," declared with considerable embarrassment that he cared no more for the Bourbons than for Napoleon; that he had no motive for his conduct except love for his country.

Partly by good fortune, partly by good management, the cortège avoided the infuriated bands who, in various places, had sworn to take the fallen Emperor's life. At Avignon his escape was almost miraculous. Near Orgon a mob of royalists beset the carriage, and Napoleon shrank in pallid terror behind Bertrand, cowering there until the immediate danger was removed by his Russian escort. A few miles out he donned a postilion's uniform and rode post through the town. At Saint-Cannat he would not touch a morsel of food for fear of poison. Rumors of the bitter feeling prevalent at Aix led him for further protection to clothe one of his aides in his own too familiar garb. In that town he was violently ill, somewhat as he had been at Fontainebleau. The attack yielded easily to remedies, and the Prussian commissioner asserted that it was due to a loathsome disease. Thereafter the hounded fugitive wore an Austrian uniform, and sat in the Austrian commissioner's carriage; thus disguised, the Emperor of Elba seemed to feel secure. From Luc onward the company was protected by Austrian hussars; but in spite of these military jailers, mob violence became stronger from day to day in each successive town. Napoleon grew morbid, and the line of travel was changed from the direction of St. Tropez to that of Fréjus in order to avoid the ever-increasing danger. The only alleviation in the long line of ills was a visit from his light and giddy but affectionate sister Pauline, the Princess Borghese, who comforted him and promised to share his exile. At length Fréjus was reached, and Napoleon resumed his composure as he saw an English frigate and a French brig lying in the harbor. Perhaps the beautiful view recalled to an outcast monarch the return, in 1799, of one General Bonaparte, who had landed on the same shore to overthrow the Directory. If not, it must have been due to unwonted dejection or dark despair.

Again Napoleon remarked a breach of his treaty. He was to have sailed from St. Tropez in a corvette; here was only a brig. Accordingly, as if to mark an intentional slight, in reality for his safety and comfort, he asked and obtained permission to embark on the English frigate, the Undaunted, as the guest of her captain. The promised corvette was at St. Tropez awaiting its passenger, but the hasty change of plan had made it impossible to bring her around in time. Possibly for this reason, too, the baggage of Napoleon had been much diminished in quantity; and of this he complained also, as being a breach of his treaty. His farewell to the Russian and Prussian commissioners was brief and dignified; the Austrian hussars paid full military honors to the party; and as the Emperor, accompanied by the English and Austrian commissioners, embarked, a salvo of twenty-four guns rang out from the Undaunted. Already he had begun to eulogize England and her civilization, and to behave as if throwing himself on the good faith of an English gentleman, exactly as a defeated knight would throw himself on the chivalric courtesy of his conqueror. This appearance of distinguished treatment heightened his self-satisfaction. His attendants said that once again he was "all emperor."

It was a serious blow when, on passing aboard ship, he discovered that the salutes had been in recognition of the commissioners, and that the polite but decided Captain Ussher was determined to treat his illustrious guest with the courtesy due to a private gentleman, and with that alone. Although chafing at times during the voyage against the restrictions of naval discipline, Napoleon submitted gracefully, and wore a subdued air. This was his first contact with English customs: sometimes they interested him; frequently, as in the matter of after-dinner amusements and Sunday observance, they irritated him, and then with a contemptuous petulance he withdrew to his cabin. In conversation with Koller, the Austrian commissioner, he once referred to his conduct in disguising himself on the road to Fréjus as pusillanimous, and admitted in vulgar language that he had made an indecent display of himself. He was convinced that all the dreadful scenes through which he had passed were the work of Bourbon emissaries. In general his talk was a running commentary on the past, a well-calculated prattle in which, with apparent spontaneity and ingenuousness, interpretations were placed on his conduct which were thoroughly novel. This was the beginning of a series of historical commentaries lasting, with interruptions, to the end of his life. There is throughout a unity of purpose in the explication and embellishment of history which will be considered later. On May fourth the Undaunted cast anchor in the harbor of Porto Ferrajo.

Elba was an island divided against itself, there being both imperialists and royalists among its inhabitants, and a considerable party which desired independence. By representing that Napoleon had brought with him fabulous sums, the Austrian and English commissioners easily won the Elbans to a fervor of loyalty for their new emperor. Before nightfall of the fourth the court was established, and the new administration began its labors. After mastering the resources and needs of his pygmy realm, the Emperor began at once to deploy all his powers, mending the highways, fortifying the strategic points, and creating about the nucleus of four hundred guards which were sent from Fontainebleau an efficient little army of sixteen hundred men. His expenses were regulated to the minutest detail, the salt-works and iron-mines, which were the bulwarks of Elban prosperity, began at once to increase their output, and taxation was regulated with scrupulous nicety. By that supereminent virtue of the French burgher, good management, the island was made almost independent of the remnants of the Tuileries treasure, the sum of about five million francs, which Napoleon had brought from France. The same powers which had swayed a world operated with equal success in a sphere almost microscopic by comparison. To many this appeared a sorry commentary on human grandeur, but the great exile did not intend to sink into a contemptible lethargy. If the future had aught in store for him, his capacities must have exercise and their bearings be kept smooth by use. The Princess Borghese had been separated from her second husband soon after the marriage, and since 1810 she had lived an exile from Paris, having been banished for impertinent conduct to the Empress. But she cherished no malice, and before long, according to promise, she arrived and took up her abode as her brother's companion. Madame Mère, though distant in prosperity, came likewise to soothe her son in adversity. The intercepted letters of the former prove her to have been at least as loose in her life at Elba as ever before, but they do not afford a sufficient basis for the scandals concerning her relations with Napoleon which were founded upon them and industriously circulated at the court of Louis XVIII. The shameful charge, though recently revived and ingeniously supported, appears to have no adequate foundation.

Napoleon's economies were rendered not merely expedient, but imperative, by the fact that none of the moneys from France were forthcoming which had been promised in his treaty with the powers. After a short stay Koller frankly stated that in his opinion they never would be paid, and departed. The island swarmed with Bourbon spies, and the only conversation in which Napoleon could indulge himself unguardedly was with Sir Neil Campbell, the English representative, or with the titled English gentlemen who gratified their curiosity by visiting him. During the summer heat, when the court was encamped on the heights at Marciana for refreshment, there appeared a mysterious lady with her child. Both were well received and kindly treated, but they withdrew themselves entirely from the public gaze. Common rumor said it was the Empress, but this was not true; it was the Countess Walewska, with one of the two sons she bore her host, whom she still adored. They remained but a few days, and departed as mysteriously as they had come. Base females thronged the precincts of the imperial residence, openly struggling for Napoleon's favor as they had so far never dared to do; success too frequently attended their efforts.

But the one woman who should have been at his side was absent.[15] It is certain that she made an honest effort to come, and apartments were prepared for her reception in the little palace at Porto Ferrajo. Her father, however, thwarted her at every turn, and finally she was a virtual prisoner at Schönbrunn. So manifest was the restraint that her grandmother Caroline, Queen of the Two Sicilies, cried out in indignation: "If I were in the place of Maria Louisa, I would tie the sheets of my bed to the window-frame and flee." Committed to the charge of the elegant and subtle Neipperg, a favorite chamberlain whom she had first seen at Dresden, she was plied with such insidious wiles that at last her slender moral fibre was entirely broken down, and she fell a victim to his charms. As late as August, Napoleon received impassioned letters from her; then she grew formal and cold; at last, under Metternich's urgency, she ceased to write at all. Her French attendant, Méneval, managed to convey the whole sad story to her husband; but the Emperor was incredulous, and hoped against hope until December. Then only he ceased from his incessant and urgent appeals.